Writing advice should stop targeting people who hate to write

If more writing advice was focused on people who wanted to learn how to write better, and less was focused on people who want to “become a writer”, we would have better writing and better writers.

I write constantly, and I’m always on the lookout for advice on how to improve my craft — not out of fear that I’m insufficiently capable, but out of a desire to do better. Every time I crack open a book on the craft of writing, though, I have to wade through at least a chapter (only a chapter, if I’m lucky) that describes this dysfunctional codependent relationship with writing. Nobody actually likes to write, they say (in the same way as they might say no women actually like sex), and they continue, and we hate the rare people who do like it. Call me a writing-slut, but I think that perhaps if your emotional relationship with your vocation is the same as the one with your abusive-but-charismatic ex, you probably need to do something else. However, I doubt that this description is even generally accurate: this byronic framing is a myth that we can slot much more mundane problems into (like fatigue, executive dysfunction, and fragile egos).

This is a shame. You can’t necessarily skip these chapters, because they often contain good advice even for emotionally well-adjusted writers. For instance, sticking too strictly to a plan can feel limiting, and a…